Spring 2008 - UCLA School of Nursing

ANN IVEY, B.S. ’57, M.S. ’64
In looking at my dean, I saw that she was full of the knowledge, ability, and skills
that it took to influence policy makers, and it showed in what she was able to do for
the school. It was a personality that clicked with alumni, and she mentored us while
showing the grace and style that influenced people of power.
She joined with us as we held our class reunions. She gave speeches that reminded
us that this school is very important in our lives. In my life it made all the
difference. I had a fabulous career – chief of community health services for the
County of San Bernardino when I retired in 1998 – as a result of my education from
the UCLA School of Nursing.
On the personal side, I developed cancer, and I had known for years that Marie
had it. She and I would talk, and she would say, “Ann, don’t let those dark corners
ever take hold of you. You must treat cancer as a chronic illness. You can work with
it and enjoy life and accomplish things.” She was a dear personal friend, and I will
never forget her.
Her V
TERRY L. BREAM, B.S.N. ’67, M.N. ’72
Ann Ivey’s “Late Bloomers” class helped kick off an endowment campaign to honor Cowan.
Ceremony wasn’t important to me at the age of 21.
In 1967, commencement at UCLA was held only once a year…in June. The departments and schools graduated
together in one large, impersonal, very-hot-day-on-the-bleachers ceremony, outside on the lawn where
Drake Stadium stands today.
The nursing Class of 1967 still had one awful summer quarter to go. Why go through the pomp and circumstance
when graduation wasn’t even official yet for us We didn’t march in the ceremony – all 25 of us. No caps
and gowns for the Class of 1967.
Ceremony wasn’t important to me at the age of 26.
Graduation at UCLA was still held only once a year in June 1972. This time, it wasn’t an issue of being impersonal,
with all the schools together in one big football stadium. Now it was an issue of one big physical dilemma
– my due date!
I was pregnant with my second child, hoping to get through the written portion of my comps, the oral portion
of my comps, and not delivering before I had done both. They would never fail an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant
graduate student, would they
So again, there was no cap and gown for this member of the UCLA graduate nursing program’s Class of
1972. Instead, a bundle of joy named Lauren was born a week before commencement.
Ceremony gained importance to me at the age of 53.
One day, I found myself sharing with Marie Cowan, dean of the UCLA School of Nursing, that despite my degrees
from the school over which she now presided, and despite my associate faculty position for more than 10
years, I had never donned the blue and gold hood (Bruin colors, of course) lined with apricot velvet (the conferring
color for nursing) and marched in a processional university graduation. With that knowledge, Marie orchestrated
a very special experience.
As is customary, only the dean of a school is allowed to confer the degrees on the graduates. But Marie remembered
her own daughter’s graduation some years before at the University of Washington – where she was
on the faculty.
So an exception was made, and Marie officially arranged the same special moment for me. On June 10, 1998,
along with the dean, I handed my daughter, Lauren Bream Logan, M.S.N. ’98, her Master’s Degree in Nursing –
cap, gown, tears and all!
Bream, manager of nursing administration for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, has been instrumental in providing
annual grant funding for UCLA School of Nursing faculty research from Kaiser Permanente.
6 UCLA NURSING